"Mylne" was William Milns, author of the Well-Bred Scholar, 1794.
Crabb Robinson does not mention Coleridge's letter, nor make any reference to it, in his Diary. He went to France in August after circuit. It was at this time (August 23) that Coleridge wrote to John Murray concerning a translation of Goethe's Faust, which Murray contemplated (see Letters, E. H. Coleridge, page 624). The suggestion that Coleridge should translate Faust for Murray came viâ Crabb Robinson viâ Lamb.
The "life of the German conjuror." There were several Colerus'. John
Colerus of Amsterdam wrote a Life of Spinoza. Lamb may have meant this,
John Colerus of Berlin invented a perpetual calendar and John Jacob
Colerus examined Platonic doctrine. There are still others.
The Morgans had moved to Ashley, near Box. Miss Brent was Mrs. Morgan's sister.
"Our annual feast"—the annual dinner of the India House clerks.
"The Architectonicon." Lamb refers possibly to some great projected work of Coleridge's. The term is applied to metaphysicians. Possibly Goethe is referred to.]
LETTER 207
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
26th August, 1814.
Let the hungry soul rejoice: there is corn in Egypt. Whatever thou hast been told to the contrary by designing friends, who perhaps inquired carelessly, or did not inquire at all, in hope of saving their money, there is a stock of "Remorse" on hand, enough, as Pople conjectures, for seven years' consumption; judging from experience of the last two years. Methinks it makes for the benefit of sound literature, that the best books do not always go off best. Inquire in seven years' time for the "Rokebys" and the "Laras," and where shall they be found?—fluttering fragmentally in some thread-paper—whereas thy "Wallenstein" and thy "Remorse" are safe on Longman's or Pople's shelves, as in some Bodleian; there they shall remain; no need of a chain to hold them fast—perhaps for ages—tall copies—and people shan't run about hunting for them as in old Ezra's shrievalty they did for a Bible, almost without effect till the great-great-grand-niece (by the mother's side) of Jeremiah or Ezekiel (which was it?) remembered something of a book, with odd reading in it, that used to lie in the green closet in her aunt Judith's bedchamber.